It is well known in the computer industry to use a backplane bus arrangement with a plurality of circuit cards. Each circuit card plugging into a female connector mounted on one surface of the backplane. One such computer bus arrangement is the IEEE standard 1014-1987 VMEbus. The VMEbus is an industry standard multiprocessor system bus that uses a 32-bit address and data bus for communication between various VME cards. Because of the success of this standard and the availability of circuit cards for use therewith, it is highly desirable to use this standard in industries whose standard practices are at variance with those of the computer industry. In particular, the direct application of the VMEbus to telecommunication is hindered by industry guidelines on maintenance and safety, for example NEBS (BellCore TR-NWT 000063).